January 27, 2013

KOLKATA: Former finance
minister Asim Dasgupta today warned of an impending crisis in the state because
of an unprecedented rise in mobilisation of deposits by chit funds, willy nilly
holding the Trinamul government responsible for pushing small savers towards a
bubble that may burst.

“The chit funds that are
mobilising money now will start facing repayment obligation after a few years…
A crisis is awaiting as the model is unsustainable,” Dasgupta told a news
conference this afternoon.

The growth of chit funds —
sources said the number may not be less than 3,000 — in the state has become a
political hot potato for the Mamata Banerjee government as the Opposition has
blamed the ruling party for the mushrooming of these entities, which promise
high returns to depositors.

Depositors are either
promised high rates of interest — at times around 30 to 40 per cent a year — on
their deposit or different varieties of assets like land or property at
attractive places at a future date.

Sources in the state finance
department said the annual collections by the chit fund companies would not be
less than Rs 15,000 crore.......

January 26, 2013

Kolkata: Religious angle Many
feel imams and muezzins consider accepting government against Islam.

Last year, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee made a
controversial announcement of giving a monthly financial aid to imams and
muezzins. The Trinamool Congress government had hoped to receive a windfall of
applications from the imams and muezzins across the state. However, almost nine
months after the scheme was announced, the government has received only a
trickle of applications from the community leaders.

Officials say the main reason behind the
lukewarm response could be that a large number of imams and muezzins do not
want to accept money from the government as they consider that Islam does not
permit accepting financial aid from a non-religious body.

Unofficial estimates show that there are around
70,000 mosques in the state. The government, which announced Rs 2,500 monthly
aid to imams and Rs 1,000 monthly aid to muezzins, had set aside Rs 126 crore —
Rs 90 crore for the imams and Rs 36 crore for muezzins — for the current
financial year.

A brief calculation could mean that government
had set a target of enrolling 30,000 imams and 30,000 muezzins for this
financial year. Till date, only 23,000 imams and 12,000 muezzins have submitted
their applications to the Wakf Board.

“I have heard that a section of imams and
muezzins do not want to accept money from the government since the fund does
not come from a religious body. So, they consider accepting money from
government as un-Islamic. At one point of time, we had expected applications
from 3,000 imams of Burdwan district alone. But so far, we have received only
700 applications from that district,” said West Bengal Wakf Board Chairman
Abdul Gani.

A senior official of Minority Affairs Department
said imams in most of the interior parts of the state get food and other
necessary material from the locals. “This may be another reason why not all the
imams and muezzins have opted for the government money,” said the official.

When the government had announced the scheme,
there was widespread criticisms with some alleging that Trinamool government’s
bid to woo the minorities may flare up communal tensions in the state. Hindu
outfits demanded that priests too be given such “honorarium”. To counter the
allegation, the government said the money was being given to imams and muezzins
as they help government agencies implement various social schemes like pulse
polio drive and creating awareness among the community.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee,
who has a penchant for courting controversies, effortlessly stirred yet another
when she wondered at a public meeting whether she should beat up the prime
minister for getting her demands met.

As the Trinamool Congress supremo came under
intense criticism for her remarks, she found an able comrade in ministerial
peer Jyotipriya Mallick – now famous for bizarre prescriptions – who this time
dished out a “venomous” decree.

The week began on a stormy note when
Banerjee, while venting her ire on the Congress- led central government said:
“What else can I do? Shall I go beat him up? Then people will call me a goon.
But I don’t care. I can go to the very last mile for the people.”

She made the remarks at Canning in South 24
Parganas while stating that her repeated meetings with Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh yielded no result on her demand to lower fertilizer prices.

The remarks gave the opposition – the
Congress and the CPI-M led Left Front – the much needed fodder as they went
ballistic in slamming her, with some of the leaders even questioning her mental
health....

RBI
data show state has raised Rs 17,300 crore through state development loan

Namrata
Acharya / Kolkata

BUSINESS
STANDARD, January 25, 2013, 13:41 IST

In
continuation with the brisk borrowing spree, West Bengal has emerged as the top
borrower this financial year too.

Data
from Reserve Bank of India (RBI) show, West Bengal has raised Rs 17,300 crore
through state development loan, so far in the financial year. This year, the
state government has a market borrowing limit of Rs 22,821 crore, which leaves
Rs 5,521 crore for the next two months for the present financial year.

Notably,
in spite of a cushion of Rs 5,521 crore for the next two months, West Bengal
chief minister Mamata Banerjee, has been ruing that the state has been denied
to raise debt.

“They
(Centre) had allowed the Left to make so much debt, but they have been denying
us the same. Why are you trying to snatch away our livelihood? The people of
Bengal will have to assert their rights and demand that the centre stop taking
away all the money,” Banerjee had recently said at a public meeting.

West
Bengal is seeking a moratorium on interest and repayment totaling Rs 22,000
crore on its debt for the next three years, and formulation of a debt
restructuring exercise over the interim period. The debt restructuring should
include debt elimination, increasing repayment tenure and reducing interest
rate on loans.

“Stop
taking the interest. We want justice,” the chief minister had recently
said.

However,
the opposition Left Front government has been quick to retort, when yesterday,
Asim Dasgupta, former finance minister, West Bengal, said the burgeoning debt
of the state was on account of higher
expenditure, rather than old debt.

"The
new government has been making some misleading statements. If Rs 25,000 crore
is spent on debt repayment and we add Rs 41,000 crore paid towards salary and
pension, there would still be Rs 34,000 crore left out of the Rs 1 lakh crore
receipt," said Dasgupta.

"The
people of the state would like to know if there is extra-budgetary expenditure
or are they unable to provide utilization certificates," he said.

West
Bengal's debt burden of according to the last Budget document was Rs 2.08 lakh
crore. The outstanding debt of the government is set to increase to Rs 2.26
lakh crore in the present fiscal, making it one of the most indebted state in
terms of tax to GSDP ratio.

Last
financial year, West Bengal availed of relaxation of the Fiscal Responsibility
and Budget Management Act twice, pushing
the borrowing of the state to Rs 22,423 crore.

The
continual deterioration by the state of finances is also evident from a recent
report on State Finances: Study of Budgets 2012-13.

In
2011-12 (RE), all states were able to contain their interest payment to revenue
receipt ratio (IP-RR) to 15%, except in case of Gujarat, Kerala, West Bengal
and Punjab. West Bengal had the highest IP-RR ratio at 27.20%, with
Chhattisgarh recording the lowest at 4.5%.

According
to the state budget document, this financial year, West Bengal's revenue
receipt is projected to be Rs 76,943
crore and expenditure is Rs 83,801 crore leaving a huge revenue deficit of Rs 6,585 crore.

West
Bengal's expense on salaries alone is set to increase from Rs 28,899 crore to
Rs 31,184 crore by the end of this fiscal, which is about 37% of the projected
expenditure of the government.

Similarly,
the cost of pension and other retirement benefits is projected to increase from
Rs 8,385 crore to Rs 9,582 crore.

January 25, 2013

Susanta Ghosh, who is now on bail and awaiting trial, told The Telegraph today in response to a question: “I was brought to the CID headquarters (Bhabani Bhavan in Alipore) from Midnapore around midnight on August 11. A team of officers entered my cell within half an hour. They interrogated me till around 1.30am. Just as I was falling asleep around 3.30 am, another batch of officers came and they continued questioning me for two hours.”

January 20, 2013

KOLKATA: Even Prakash Karat didn't expect it so
early. Getting a whiff of the rising anti-incumbency in Bengal, the CPM general
secretary on Saturday cited instances to showcase what he called Mamata
Banerjee's poor governance.

"The state has witnessed a number of farmer
suicides, hunger deaths, denial of pension to state transport employees, and
above all the intra-Trinamool feuds. I think people have have realised what
harm they have done to the state by voting this kind of a party," Karat
said at the end of the three-day CPM central committee meeting.

Expressing concern over the continuing violence
in Bengal, he said: "There is no let up in the violence unleashed on Left
activists. As many as 85 CPM men have been killed since the assembly elections.
Protests have been met with bullets, bombs and lathis - the latest being the
attack on Abdur Rezzak Mollah. The Trinamool government is patronising all
this, though more people are coming out against the terror."

Karat also broadly endorsed the Bengal CPM's
land policy, saying that the government should have a role in accumulating big
patches of land. However, he had a rider about the proposed compensation and
rehabilitation package: "We believe that the government should acquire the
land only after 80% of landowners give consent. And, the compensation and
rehabilitation should stand integral to the new land bill. We are not in favour
of making exceptions for certain sectors such as railways or mining."

Digressing from the projected correlation of
political forces into two camps - secular and communal - as the Congress and
its allies, particularly RJD chief Lalu Prasad, have been preaching, Karat
preferred to stick to the formulation of the Coimbatore Party Congress that
calls for fighting the Congress and the BJP as well.

"We will work for the defeat of the
Congress and keep the BJP at bay. We have decided to float policy alternatives
instead on food security, hike of railway fares, deregulation of diesel prices
and the proposed dismantling of the drug control authority that will burden the
common people," Karat said. He also ruled out chances of a Third Front.

Claiming that the Mamata Banerjee government had failed on all fronts, CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat on Saturday said that the people of West Bengal must have realised now what harm has been done by voting into office such a party. “This government has failed on all fronts.

The CPI(M) leader and Rajya Sabha MP, Sitaram Yechury, who is also the chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on transport, tourism and culture that deals with civil aviation, has been invited to the event but his name does not figure among those shortlisted to be on the dais. President Pranab Mukherjee will inaugurate the facility in the presence of chief minister Mamata Banerjee and others.READ MORE IN:Sorry, Yechury, you ain’t dais-class

A survey conducted by the Bengal government has brought to light several loopholes in the development programmes undertaken for Jungle Mahal.....The report has mentioned that in a significant number of villages, wells are the only source of drinking water. The survey team had visited 35 Jungle Mahal villages and found that only 23 had tubewells.

Barely two years after Trinamool Congress came to power, most of the pro-Mamata Banerjee personalities like painter Samir Aich, academician Sunanda Sanyal, writer activist Mahasweta Devi, theatre personality Bibhas Chakraborty and Kaushik Sen, singer Indrani Sen and Protul Mukherjee are now humming a different tune.

I will request Mamata Banerjee…. You must be aware that she is saying one thing repeatedly and that is she has done 99 per cent of what had to be done for the minority communities. We will not accept such a lie,” said Peerzada Toha Siddique, the director of Furfura Darbar Sharif in Hooghly.

January 9, 2013

The
Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following
statement:

The
Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) strongly condemns the physical assault on Comrade
Abdur Rezzak Mollah, member of the West Bengal State Committee of the CPI(M)
and MLA. Rezzak Mollah was assaulted by a Trinamul Congress leader Arabul
Islam and others while visiting a Party office which had been burnt down
by the TMC men. Rezzak Mollah received injuries to his face and has been
hospitalized.

This is
the latest instance of the continuing violence by the Trinamul Congress against
the CPI(M), the Left parties and the opposition. The CPI(M) demands that the
TMC leader and others responsible for the attack be immediately arrested.

The
Polit Bureau appeals to all democratic forces to raise their voice
of protest against the thuggish violence indulged in by the Trinamul Congress
in West Bengal.

BHANGAR: The attack on CPM
veteran Abdur Rezzak Mollah has bared the underbelly of the gory politics in
the bheri lands (wetlands) of South 24-Parganas.

Bhangar, a mere 28km from the city, was under
the writ of Mollah's party for years. Now, Trinamool Congress strongman Arabul
Islam calls the shots.

Arabul, a former MLA, is the prime accused in
the attack on Mollah - yet another criminal charge in a long list of pending
cases, from criminal intimidation to attempt-to-murder. According to police,
none of the cases have been dropped though Arabul has got bail in some.

The CPM has demanded his arrest within the next
24 hours. "We will wait for the administration to act by Tuesday noon.
Else we will stage a dharna in front of the police superintendent's
office," said Leader of the Opposition Surjya Kanta Mishra.

The condemnation of Arabul across political
lines has come as a ray of hope to a woman from Bhangar, who was driven out of
her home and hearth in August and forced to take shelter in New Town, Rajarhat,
with her husband.

"Some men, led by Arabul, beat me up at
Satulia bazar in front of everyone, tore off my sari and blouse, and attacked
my private parts. They dragged me to the local dumping ground thinking I was
dead. That was on August 28," she told TOI on Monday. She went to Kashipur
police station to lodge a complaint but in vain. "Police did not initiate
an inquiry till I moved Alipore court. On hearing my complaint, the chief
judicial magistrate directed the officer-in-charge to start a case," she
said.

While the traumatized woman had to wait till
October for the police to start an inquiry, the man who is accused of
"leading the attack" is unfazed. "I do not know of any such
complaint. You can check with the local police," said Arabul.

Kashipur Police, however, recognised the
complaint. "Yes, a complaint was made by (TOI is withholding the name)
though her injury report doesn't confirm all the elements of the complaint, or
Arabul's having a hand in it," a police officer said. But he has not sent
the report to the court, saying the complaint is untrue.

The entire episode goes against the chief
minister's directive to police to take a complaint as and when a victim comes
to the police station.

However, the rules of the game changed when a
woman known to Arabul went to Kashipur police station to complain about a
family dispute. While the sub-inspector on duty took a few minutes to record
the complaint, Arabul angrily stepped into the police station and slapped the
officer. This was within days of the molestation complaint lodged against the
Trinamool leader. As usual, the police officer bore with the assault.

The Trinamool chief - who showed "zero tolerance"
to pay leaders Meer Taher Ali and the others who swayed with girls and showered
money on them at the party's foundation day at Bhangar - has been bearing with
Arabul for long. Is it because Mamata needs Arabul for the coming panchayat
polls?

Mamata's infinite tolerance for this infamous
leader from Bhangar has raised questions even among Trinamool circles. There
was not a word of caution from the Trinamool leadership when Arabul, the
president of Bhangar College, barged into the staff room in April last year and
allegedly threw a jug full of water at lecturer Debjani Dey.

Former Union minister Saugata Roy gave vent to
his disgust at a meeting of college principals held at Ashutosh College.
Trinamool minister Rabi Ranjan Chattopadhyay had also spoken against Arabul.
However, the CM kept mum while education minister Bratya Basu threw his weight
behind Arabul.

BHANGAR (SOUTH 24-PARGANAS): Political violence
touched a new nadir on Sunday afternoon when former CPM minister and present
Bhangar MLA Abdur Rezzak Mollah was allegedly assaulted by a mob led by
ex-Trinamool Congress MLA Arabul Islam at Katatala in the Kolkata Leather
Complex police station area.

As Mollah's jeep reached the spot at 12.20 pm, a
large group of Trinamool men broke away from a meeting and rushed towards the
vehicle with bamboo sticks. While the jeep's windscreen was smashed, Mollah was
allegedly punched by Arabul. As he collapsed to the ground, the mob kicked and
hit him on the stomach and chest for about seven minutes, even as his lone security
guard and driver watched helplessly. A severely injured and bleeding Mollah "he has a deep gash under his eye and a cut on his lips apart from a hip
injury” was rescued by two policemen. He was put into the damaged vehicle and
taken to the Rabindranath Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences.

A hospital official said some teeth on Rezzak's
lower jaw have been broken and he was bleeding from his lower lip where two
stitches were given. His ECG has been done and further X-rays will be carried
out on Monday.

Municipal and urban development minister Firhad
Hakim rubbished the charge, saying that Mollah was only pushed by some people.
He denied that Trinamool supporters had attacked Mollah and his men.

The assault, coming in the wake of a series of
CPM-Trinamool clashes across the state, was played down by the Trinamool
leadership. The party claimed it was a drama staged by CPM to defame the state
government. CPM has planned a sit-in at Alipur demanding the arrest of the
culprits within 48 hours.

Mollah had gone to Katatala to inspect a party
office, which was burnt down on Saturday night. CPM alleged it was done by
Trinamool-backed miscreants. "I was told by the women of Katatala that
Arabul and his associates have been looting and torturing them. So I assured
them that I would visit them. That is why I had gone there," Mollah said
in hospital.

Mollah's driver Amar Ghosh, who also suffered
minor injuries, said the assault was pre-planned. "As we were close to the
party office around 12.20 pm, we found a small gathering. They suddenly started
running towards us. They were carrying bamboo sticks. They first smashed the
glass windscreen. Rezzak Mollah opened the door and got down but before he
could say anything, a blow landed on his face, leaving him bleeding," he
said.

Ghosh said after Mollah fell down, they kept
kicking him. His security guard made a futile attempt to save him, but was
vastly outnumbered by Arabul's supporters.

In the evening, Ghosh lodged a complaint against
eight persons, including Arabul Islam, Pradip and Kalu at the Kolkata Leather
Complex police station. Trinamool has also planned to lodge a counter-complaint
against Mollah.

At a hurriedly convened press conference at
Trinamool Bhavan, Hakim said it was a drama staged by Mollah, who had gone to
the spot ignoring a request from the administration to the contrary. "We
had a street-corner meeting and Arabul was delivering his speech. Suddenly
Rezzak Mollah reached the spot and hurled filthy abuses. It led to tension and
a scuffle broke out. If there was an attack by 3,000-4,000 people we had there,
Mollah might not have reached the hospital ever," Hakim said.

Hakim also alleged that the CPM party office was
burnt down by its own members to malign the administration. Sauqat Mollah, once
a close aide of Mollah and now a Trinamool leader in Bhangar, said: "Only
on January 1, our party (Trinamool) office was ransacked and burnt down. Since
then, there was tension in Katatala. Mollah went there just to add fuel to
fire."

A senior police officer admitted that Mollah had
informed the administration about his visit to Katatala. He also confirmed that
police personnel had rescued Mollah from the irate mob.

CPM leader Kanti Ganguly said the attack was
pre-planned. Before the assault, Arabul and his henchmen had asked shops to
down their shutters, he said. "This is part of a game plan before the
panachayet elections to unleash fear among the electorate," Ganguly said.

Amid the demand for the arrest of Arabul by
senior Left Front leaders like Biman Bose, Surjya Kanta Mishra, Bikash Ranjan
Bhattacharjee and Subhas Naskar, Hakim said: "If Arabul Islam is arrested,
then Rezzak Mollah would also be arrested for an even worse offence."

Rebel Trinamool MP Kabir Suman said he was
feeling ashamed about the assault. "What is happening? I am feeling
ashamed and I apologize to Rezzak Mollah. If the allegations that have been
raised against him are true, Arabul Islam is out of his mind. What's wrong with
him? Can't he understand what a wrong message he is sending to the grassroots
Trinamool men?"

Kolkata, Dec 28: Ideally, 2012
should have been a honeymoon year for the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool
Congress Government in West Bengal.

For a party formed in 1998, Trinamool had not
merely won the May 2011 elections with absolute majority but had also displaced
a three-decade old CPI (M)-led Left Front Government.

The credit for this change in regime goes
entirely to Banerjee. Ever since her victory in the 1984 General Elections (as
a Congress nominee), she had emerged as the most credible face of the
Opposition in the State.

She studied each and every move of her arch
rival carefully and, repeated the same tactics in her favour. And, since she
has not been indoctrinated with any known ideology, her doors were open to
everyone, from far Left to Right, as long as they opposed the CPI (M).

So, when the former Buddhadeb Bhattacharyya
Government, in its haste to industrialise the State, antagonised the party’s
rural support base, Banerjee utilised it to build a strong anti-land
acquisition campaign — more or less on similar lines as the Left did in the
1960s.

Careful to protect her image, she had always
held extreme positions — as in declining the last ditch attempt of the Left
Front Government to strike a compromise deal with the agitating farmers at
Singur — but promised to have a model in store to make everyone happy.

Though there is lack of clarity in the new Act,
land should be returned to unwilling farmers in Singur. Government will not
acquire land but investment should come in droves. The State coffers may be
empty but development will happen through PPP model and so on.

Cookie crumbles

But, the world clearly did not move the way
Banerjee wanted .

The court struck down a slew of legislations
ranging from the Singur Act (for taking over land from the possession of Tata
Motors and redistribute it to unwilling farmers) to amendments in the
cooperatives Act.

A series of Government actions, such as closing
down a private medical college or disbanding police unions were reversed by the
judiciary.

Investments — except those initiated during the
Left regime — have largely eluded the State. On the contrary, West Bengal had
lost committed investments from at least one IT major, due to Banerjee’s anti
SEZ policy.

Collective investment schemes (popularly
referred as ‘chit funds’), each mopping up thousands of crores of rupees a year
— either illegally or using legal loopholes — have mushroomed, promising sky
high returns from the investors.

The end result is that the State’s small savings
inflow has taken a hit, leading to further impact on West Bengal’s dwindling
finances.

On the firing line

It would be incorrect to say that Banerjee was
all wrong in her actions and assumptions. But, she suffered from two major
shortcomings: Intolerance to opposition or criticism and, major inadequacies in
party administration.

The result: Within one and a half year in power
and, another few months to go before Panchayat polls, the Trinamool is now
facing allegations of widespread corruption, from within.

News of clashes between different party factions
keeps pouring in. Examples of multiple Trinamool unions — owing allegiance to
different leaders — in the same organisation, are aplenty.

In Singur the party leaders are now faced with
angry protestors. The farmers are now left with neither money nor land.
Rabindranath Bhattacharya, three-time MLA from the constituency, since 2001,
has quit the State cabinet.

One MP fell out with the leadership almost a
year ago . Another MLA criticised the one-upmanship in the party and was
recently suspended. In-fighting is spreading even at the block levels.

And, expectation is rife in the political
circles that even a slightest decline in Trinamool’s electoral fortunes in the
Panchayat polls may accentuate the troubles.

Lessons not learnt

Going by the feedback on social networking
sites, Trinamool’s popularity is waning especially among the urban youth. Even
some party veterans admit to these concerns, albeit behind closed doors.

But, it is difficult to gauge whether Banerjee
takes such concerns seriously. For the moment, she is banking on distributing
bicycles to girls from minority sections or donating sickles (used in harvesting
the crop) and agri tools to keep her rural vote bank intact.

Though the fiscal strain has intensified, she
recently announced more jobs as well as higher pay (DA) to Government
employees. She could have offered more if the Centre had allowed the State to
pile up more debt disregarding the fiscal responsibility pact.

And, every embarrassment to her Government — be
it rape incidents or tribal protest against land acquisition by a coal miner —
are readily described as “conspiracy” of the CPI (M) or “sections of media” to
malign the Government.